The Desegregated Heart - March 5
Today’s Readings: AM Psalm 95* 69:1-23(24-30)31-38; PM Psalm 73; Jer. 5:1-9; Rom. 2:25-3:18; John 5:30-47
Today’s Reflection
“Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, look around and take note! Search its squares and see if you can find one person who acts justly and seeks truth—so that I may pardon Jerusalem. Although they say, ‘As the Lord lives’, yet they swear falsely. O Lord, do your eyes not look for truth? You have struck them, but they felt no anguish; you have consumed them, but they refused to take correction. They have made their faces harder than rock; they have refused to turn back.” –Jeremiah 5:1-4
Sarah Patton Boyle was an Episcopal church woman and civil rights activist in the 1950s and 1960s. Raised in the context of a traditional, white Southern family who did not question what she calls “the Southern Code,” her forebears were Confederates of the Virginia planter class. Boyle’s mother, Jane, would remind her throughout her childhood that her own family, the Stringfellows, was amongst the best Virginia families. Boyle’s father, Robert, was an Episcopal priest who not only worked as a regional organizer for the national church, but he also directed a church program meant to support African Americans through education. Boyle recalls, in her memoir The Desegregated Heart, how she grew up with black workers both in her household and on her family’s land. As a young child, she spent much time around these people of color, and they became friends and confidantes in her life. However, as she approached adolescence, her parents enforced the Southern code by not letting her play with or socialize with ‘the help’ once she turned 12 years old; now she was instructed that “it was no longer ‘proper’ for me to be ‘familiar’ with Negroes. Certain rules of adult conduct must now be observed. It was wrong to violate these rules.”
Later in life, when she became a civil rights advocate, a central thread in Boyle’s pro-integration argument was the idea that people can change—whether the change is from silent, passive support to more public, active support, or from holding onto racist misconceptions to getting to know who people really are through personal interactions. As Boyle reconnected with the Episcopal faith of her youth as an adult in the late 1940s, through worship and involvement at St. Paul’s in Charlottesville, her spiritual renewal laid the groundwork for a conversion in how she saw herself in relationship to her fellow humans—especially when it came to race.
Boyle’s main example of conversion toward integration is her own life story, told in descriptive detail and with much reflection in The Desegregated Heart. The spiritual element is woven throughout her memoir, but it is especially evident in chapter 14, “Once to Every Man and Nation.” In it, Boyle tells of her moment of decision in May 1951, not quite a year after Gregory Swanson, an African American man, filed for admission to Virginia Law, recalling, “I knew I must decide, definitely and finally, whether or not I would fight in the … battle for equality,” describing it as different than her less deeply thought initial decision to act in 1950. She recalled listing her various qualifications for being ready to fight this battle, such as her noble family heritage, lack of fear, persistence, and writing ability. Coming in at number five of her list, “(though had I been confronted with its placement, I would have insisted that it was first) was my faith.” As Boyle elaborated, “I believed that if you did what was right to the best of your ability you would receive all help necessary from Above. … I saw myself as mediator, peacemaker…, restorer of the Southern Utopia of heart- and soul-satisfying interracial relationships, but on a higher plane than before.” She took as her motto the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, which she often used to conclude her public talks, especially to religious organizations and churches.
Looking back, Boyle described herself as “naïve as an infant bunny in my theology and in my hopes,” but she resolved to move forward, making her “decision on a Friday night… and all day Saturday I was sick within. The Southern code muttered in my ear… I no longer believed in it but I could still hear its voice—and I knew others believed. I was haunted by the feeling that I was being catapulted into outer space, far from all that I had known.” When she went to her church the next day. The words of the last stanza of the processional hymn eased her mind, “Earth shall be fair, and all her people one: Nor till that hour shall God’s whole will be done.”
Later in the service, the hymn just before the sermon was one whose words, written by James Russell Lowell, “sounded as though it had been conceived and phrased for me personally at this moment in my life: ‘Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide… for the good or evil side.’” The rector’s sermon that day made Boyle feel “as if he were counseling me alone,” as he preached that “whenever you chose what seems to you the highest course, you have made the right decision, so you shouldn’t fear that later developments might prove it otherwise.” When Sarah Patton Boyle left church that Sunday, her conversion not only to integration but to the cause of civil rights activism was complete: “When the service was over, I left the church with all my doubts wiped away. They never returned… Always I have had with me the thread of comfort that I chose rightly at the crossroads of 1951.”
—Becky+
A Prayer Attributed to St. Francis of Assisi
Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
Questions for Self-Reflection
Looking back, in what ways do you see that your heart and mind been converted over the course of your life? In what ways would you like to see God continue to change your outlook and your relationships with your fellow human beings?
Daily Challenge
Commit to praying the prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi through the remainder of Lent, asking God to make you an instrument of his peace and show you what role you may have in the ongoing work of reconciliation.